Detailed Urban Landscapes: Paint Venice in Watercolor

1. Introduction: Urban landscapes are interesting and rich subject full of life. The perfect subject for watercolor painting. In this class, we'll be painting a detailed scene of Venice from the Grand Canal using a variety of wet and wet techniques and wet on dry techniques. We'll start from the ground up and learn how to compose, planned, and draw your landscape scene in pencil. First, we'll go through how to emphasize and emit areas in your reference photo to create a more interesting and unique painting. In this scene, we use wet and wet techniques to paint the colors and soft details. And the first one, this can be a challenge for beginners. But don't worry, I'm going to show you how to time your brush strokes to create soft blended washes. Supply lines. Learn how to gain control in layer effectively to create a loose atmospheric seen. It's easier than you think. Creating fine, sharp details are just as crucial when painting urban landscapes. Create shadows, contrast, and interest. But understanding when to add the mean is crucial. I'm excited to get started. So join me in this class. You'll be painting this beautiful scene of Venice in no time at all. 2. Materials Required: Alright, let's talk a bit about materials before we get started in this class. This is a bit of 100% cotton watercolor paper. It is a medium cold press textured paper, so it does have some texture. It's not as rough as a rough textured paper. You can use that stuff as well. I tend to go for cold press paper because it's a nice go-between. I can get in a lot of details without too much struggle, but at the same time get the benefits of that textured paper. And the benefits include things like seamless blending. You can wet an area, drop in some extra color and it will just spread evenly, dry roughly at the same time when you're using hot press paper, that doesn't happen. Often hot press paper which will have puddles in areas, warps can be tricky to work with. So do recommend some textured paper, even if you can't get 100% cotton paper, some texture on it is very important. Cotton paper or some makes it much easier to layer because the previous layers don't come out when you go over with the second wash. Whereas if you're using other types of paper that's not cotton, it definitely going to get some kind of lifting in-between layers. So the size of the paper, this one's a quarter sheet. And I recommend using at least one eighth sheet. You want to go too small because there's a lot of detail here. It's just going to make it difficult for you to imply detail, especially when you're going in with some of these windows and stuff like that, It's gonna be a lot easier. Use a larger sheet of paper. So I want to go through just some of the brushes that I use to show you what's important. So I've got these larger brushes here, these watercolor mop brushes, they have a large belly and they actually hold a lot of water and come to a fine tip. Really important when you're painting large shapes and especially in that first wash. If you don't get that first washing, Right, Everything else is not going to work. So for these buildings, e.g. I've used probably this larger brush or even this medium-size mop brush, just gone over the top with a lot of those warmer colors in the sky here. Larger mop brush makes it easy so you don't have to keep going back to your palette and mixing things up over and over again. You can, of course, you've got to go back and top up your brush, but you do that less often. Okay. Let's go through some of the other brushes that I have. This one here is a little synthetic round brush, good for small details. So when we're looking at little windows, details on the boats, these little wooden poles in the water, a bit of detail on the roof, things like that. The small synthetic brushes are great because they don't hold a lot of water, but you get control with every brush strokes doesn't go spread water all over the place. A little rigger brush as well. I don't use that so much in this session, but I do use this one here. This is a little flat brushes. Flat brushes are also great alternative to just a normal round brush. And I actually use this one because it makes it easier I find just to get in the windows. So the shape of the windows are kinda squarish or rectangular looking because this brushes of that same shape. So if you look at these windows here, look a little bit squarish on the edges. Okay, so really good alternative as well. You can also use this brush to get in some of the shadows and you can see what I've done here in these areas at the back and just topped up the brush with a bit of this darker paint. And I'm able to get that in because again, it's quite a small area at the back here, so it's fine. This brush can do the trick. And at the same time getting nice sharp edges on the buildings. So that's about it in terms of brushes. Let's talk a bit about paint now here in the sky, but some cerulean blue haze this color here. And I've got a little bit of purplish color mixing with gray. Now I've got a few different purples here. Can mix up your own purple, you've got a blue and red. We can brought by pre-mixed purple. I just want to dial it down a little bit with some neutral tint. Neutral tint is just a pre-mixed gray. So if you've got a blue, red, and a yellow mix them together, you're gonna be able to get that color anyway, it's initially general grayish color that I tend to mixing with other colors, too, dull them down. I don't want these colors to be too vibrant up here in the sky with the clouds. So that's why I dial it down, touched by adding in some neutral tint. Same goes for some of the shadows and the buildings, but I didn't want these buildings, the shadows should look a little bit more vibrant and cooler. So I did add more blue in here. Okay. But also for the darker sections of the buildings, It's just pure black or neutral tint just to indicate some of the details there. Got some yellow ocher and a bit of orange here, pyrrole, orange, bit of burnt sienna, grateful rooftops, power orange here, the yellow ocher is more of a desaturated yellow, especially here in that building, really makes a big difference. And it doesn't look through Gaudi, You didn't have really highly saturated areas that can at times distract from what's going on in the scene. Saturated colors are great, but I do use them sparingly these days, just on areas of contrast. Here in the water, just got a bit of cerulean blue as well. I've mixed in, I think a little bit of here in the water, I've got a bit of ultramarine blue. And I think in areas I've mixed in a touch of cerulean blue as well. And you can see here I've dropped in a bit of this neutral tint in the water. Areas like the shadows underneath the Burke's Reflections on the boats. We will get to these waves I've just dropped in while the paper was still wet. Mars thing I want to mention tons of colors is this. Here, it's a bit of white gouache is opaque watercolor paintings. Great for getting in little highlights. So you can see here just on the edges of the windows and things like that. Little touches of white there just to indicate maybe some light reflecting off. It just adds that extra little finishing touch to the end of your paintings. I also mix that white sometimes with a bit of other color here, bit of a warmer color because these are wooden wooden poles, pylons taking up water. So I just thought I'd put in a bit of a warmer color there, but if yellow bit of brown. And you can see here if carry that down the side so it still sticks out near the end, but it's not as obvious as save this boat here. You can also just errors, e.g. cut around the boat and you've forgotten to leave some of the white. And actually going back with that whitewash, bring back some of those white in there as well. 3. Drawing: So we'll start off firstly with the drawing. And I'm going to put in the horizon line just underneath the middle part of the paper. So if we mark out the middle roughly here, I'm just going to draw a line just underneath here. Like that. And connecting it to the side of the scene. Pretty straightforward like that. It doesn't have to be perfect. This just marks out the area of the water. Now, let's see. We are going to need to put in all these little buildings. And the way I wanted to start off with just in the center area here, you can see if we look just around here, maybe a third of the way into the scene, about a third of the way into the scene. We've got this little structure here. I'm just going to put that in for the rest of it. I'm just going to put it in a kind of silhouette of the buildings. I'll change this up in a second, but I'm just going to roughly indicate where the buildings are. Okay. And we'll fix that up in a moment. And this side on the left, we do have some buildings coming in. We've got 11, sort of about here. Large one in the background with the triangular rooftop like that, coming down like that. And there's a bit of space in-between as well. We've also got a few other buildings that just run next to it in front of it, like this. Okay. I'll add some more details to this later on. I just want to get something in there first, okay. To roughly pudding where the buildings are. So let's start around here and I'm going to just add in little more detail. All the way at the back, like that little section there, little pass underneath. This is kinda like a little way or something. This is fairly far off in the distance so you don't want to make it too detailed or have too much going on in there. Look at it a bit closer as well, and actually see that there is a side of it that's kinda darker, like on that side. Okay. Good. I might make these arches a teeny bit smaller. Just a tad smaller. Touch smaller. That top part like this side of it here that's exposed or darker here, darker on that left-hand side. We're remembering that light source is coming from that right-hand side. So we want to emphasize that you've got this structure here. It's like a bowl or something on the top like that. There we have it. That's really not much else. I think we want to put in there, simplify that down. There's a little and again, another bit of an archway or something like that door opening up the top. There we go. Let's put in some of these other buildings now. Here's one here. Let's make sure we get these lines incorrectly. And the big thing to remember is that these are just, if we look at them where they are, just rectangles, boxes on the side. If you treat them as boxes, they become easier to draw the rooftop as, you know, you've got these triangular bits over the top. This one here, there's another rooftop like that. And we've got the sides of the building here, and that's the sides of the building. And we've got another one here coming down just like that. And I'm just taking out few bits and pieces, making sure that we've got some light on this sides indicating a bit of that light as well. But let's get into this one first. I want to get this in a bit sharper like that. Okay? Remembering that on the left-hand side of the buildings, you're going to get darkness there. I'm like that. So little shading in pencil helps. At some point it really gets quite complicated where you're looking up in this scene and you're thinking to yourself, what, what is it actually that would do these roots form, but just simplify them down. Just try to draw these repeating shapes as you can see, another rectangle here, maybe another one here. The background, another building here. And simplification. And a lot of these rooftops are just going to have, I'm just going to be a little touch of light over the top of them. I don't want to introduce too much detail. There's a dome here. We can just put in roughly where it is, like here. Okay. Dome shape like that. And we can start putting in a bit of the details on top. Okay. Now the top part of that dome there. Okay, I please have it. That's part of the dome. And you can see these little, little pillars that are running downwards and you've got little darker spots in there as well. So at them in that okay. Let's have a look here in that right-hand side is another dome that's a little bit further down, roughly here. I'm just gonna put this one in as well. Comes pretty close to that larger dome, but finishes roughly about here. So I'm going to just try to get the top of that dome like here. Like that. Then again, just putting a bit of this top section of it. That top part of it There. We have it. We've got another part of that dome, smaller one anyhow. Coming down, this is kind of just white. Next section as well. Not much detail. But we do have to just make sure that the dome is accurate. So I've just noticed I could do that. Touch better, give myself some better guide for when I'm painting. Now that There we go. Good. And you've got all these rooftops of buildings like that one just runs all the way towards the back there and you kinda just comes down like that and this is part of that building in the front. We've got this section like that. All these little buildings that just kinda connect up. Okay, separate out. All this has really, it's trying to form a bit of a silhouette. I don't want to over detail in here. Let's just another rooftop. Here is another, another rooftop here. Let's get into the lead with tau is there is actually another building here and let me just getting indication of it. That and here we've got these towers. It's kind of at the bottom. It's more of like a side. Little longer rectangle, rectangularly shaped like this. Just a longer rectangular shape. The left side, dark, darker. And there's one also on this side. It's top get that top part of it in like that. Okay. And then little dome-shaped top as well like this. Something like that. We can do the same thing for this one here. Yeah. I just connect on with each other a bit. Okay. This would just be uniform. A bit of that silhouette. I don't want to detail too much in their bits and pieces here in the background there's little chimneys you can see just on top of these buildings. And I wanted to just put in a few little bits and pieces. These chimneys can be quite helpful. Funny enough to imply some small details and things of what's going on in here. So eliminating a bit of detail as well. Okay. But we're going to leave the lights on parts of the buildings. This is just me figuring out where to leave the white were to leave the white and some of these bits and pieces that rooftop a little bit more accurately like that. Again, this part is going to be in darkness. A lot of this stuff here is just gonna be in darkness. Alright, so that's most of it. We can now just work on this building here in the back and the front, sorry. And you can see it sort of comes out roughly here. We compare the dome. I'm just putting it was putting a few little bits, some pieces in the dome. But if we compare the dome, it mostly just starts in the center of the dome. It is building out here in the foreground. I can roughly that section like that, bring that down. This is actually a couple of chimneys or something there that I'm up come down in the front of this building. Actually, this is the side of the building we can get in. But actually these forms out of this building here as well. So I can just get that out in like that. Just getting the side of this one properly can be confusing. Let's met side. Then the front of the building. Draw that in. So that's the side, the front. And then here I can now start just working on the rooftops. Like that. Better. Yeah. Okay. What are we doing here? That out? Chimney bits and pieces and things here as well, then this disappears off like that. But of course in the background we've got some more, another rooftop. Okay? So you're going to notice there's a bit of darkness here and darkness over here. Coming down like that. Softer shadow here and the building as well we can get in. I'm just having a look what's in this section. I'll leave a bit of light on the building. In a lot of it will just be in darkness. Okay. Good. So that's that right hand side done. Let's work a bit. On the left-hand side is larger building finishes above, roughly at the top section of the tower. So this triangular shape for the rooftop down. This. And let's put in some details for the buildings. That comes all the way down really to the front of the page, like here. This one's quite close to us. So I want to follow that perspective coming up there. Okay. Sounds good. A period like a rooftop or something like a tiny section of the top part of the building. This okay. So just work on the perspective of it as we're drawing. This is another rooftop. There is a rooftop here as well that comes down and forms like a side of another building like this. This smaller building coming out here. Oops. Halfway here. Okay. Can always fix this up and add some more details as we move on later. I'm going to add in more of the side of this building, the left-hand side of that building, and now it's not so visible, but I just want to do it makes things look a bit more three-dimensional, better, something like that. All these lines is not completely straight, but we'll make do the bottom attach. The rest of it is just getting in small elementary details like e.g. these little buildings off in the distance, like just some squares or what have you like they're off in the distance. Who knows what's going on there. We've got also some boats and I like this one here. This just going into the scene. I can work on that, a touch like this. Some people in there as well, which we can you can add in. Okay. I'll do that later, but I just wanted to put in an indication of them sitting in the boat maybe like this. And it's a gondola here, like that. And just kidding, that general shape of that gondola. This, It's all you need. Some people sitting in there. There's actually probably to gondolas just lined up actually. So now I can go ahead and simplify it down and again, adding some people, there's another boat. The good thing about birds is that you don't have to be perfect with them. You just have to get in a little shape like this and it will look like a boat. We've got all these highlight, highlighted bits in. There is also a gondolas running in like this, off in the distance and other boats here in front of it. A lot of this stuff does not have to be really accurate. It just has to help indicate to the viewer that they are boats. Give it a bit of life. This is some type of boat facing forwards. We go, it looks a bit better. And then we've got ones here as well that are closer. So I'll put in a touch of the front of it like that. That's part of it. Just sitting in the water like that. It's like the advisor the front here. We'll put in another one like this. That another one here as well. Just a gondola in the front. And it can be the case that you also add in some other ones if you'd like. I just thought I'd put in this gondola indication of one anyway like that. Maybe some people on there just looking at the composition and seeing whether you want to change anything. But apart from that, I do think this is looking pretty good already just for drawing. And you see a lot of these, like wooden poles sticking out of the water as well. These are very useful to add in. There is also some kind of like structure here. Middle, something. I don't know what that is. I'm just going to add it in there. Okay. Now, I think we're ready to get started. 4. First Wash: Okay, so the first thing we wanna do is put in some color for all of this, all the buildings. And I think making sure that we have a lot of light, warm colors is quite crucial here. I don't want to add too much vibrancy. And also remember we can add in, we can leave out the light. I picked out a bit of color here. This is just a beautiful color called buff titanium. It's a kind of milky color, off-white color. And I'm going to just drop some of it in here to the buildings and a lot of the buildings actually, I'll just leave white. Like especially you can see the tops of those buildings leading white. There's no problem there. But for some of them you like, you can see here it's got an off-white color. So I can just drop some of that in like this. You can also use a brush. I'm using just this brush which has some kind of a smaller mop brush. Okay? The other one was using the force is not small enough to get in those colorant cutting around details, such as adding in some of these color to the left-hand side of the buildings like that. Just to give it a bit of a backing color. Again, not too vibrant. I'm using a bit of yellow ocher in here in some parts of the buildings. But apart from that, not much going on in there at all. If this building you've got maybe a little bit of darker color in there. If we'd gotten this this one a bit of again, this yellowy color, drop that in getting more contrast actually with a darker blue, not a darker blue sky, but with high concentration of cerulean blue in the sky. The rooftops, I can pick up a bit of this stuff called burnt sienna. Little bit of burnt sienna mixed some of that up here on the palette. It's a kind of Goldie brown color, reddish brown color. And this works very well with the rooftops. This particular scene. So look at that, just drop in and drop in that color in the areas of the rooftops that you want to indicate some of this, it's mostly just water. Mind you don't add too much paint in there. Just a little bit of water. A lot of water and a little bit of paints. So 90% paint. And just getting those rooftops quickly like that. Here as well. We can add in a bit of that side of the rooftop. And notice how I'm working wet into wet as well. No worries, just have to get it in. And this one at the back there is some kind of rooftop like that there as well. Okay. Some of this will spread into the buildings, but don't worry, bit of yellow here with the yellow ocher. Just drag that down a touch. Maybe just darken the roof top a little bit like that and hear some more darker colors running through. Just warm colors still though, a lot of warmth. Let's have a look at the top of this building. I'm going to pick up a bit of this grayish blue color. It's mostly just gray from what I've left, What's left on the palette before. But I'm just adding in a touch of this color. And slightly, like I said, slightly cooler to indicate the tops of these domes. Just drop that in. Not much at all going into their more, so just on the top of the domes. Put some more back in here. Okay. The kind of almost like a teal color, slightly bluish teal color, very desaturated. And what we'll do is indicate the boundaries of the dome. Bring that down a bit maybe here. Just to get it to blend down, touch. I mean, apart from that, I'm just going to leave it. Okay. Get rid of that. Bring that down a touch as well. Oops, too much yellow. Gone into the two, it just drop in some more blue. Basically just a cool gray color. I'm kinda like teal color, I suppose in there. That off. Let's have a look at the top of the of it. It's starts to warm up a bit more, putting a bit of brown and a bit of the blue. Just to touch of it up at the top. And color, just adding a touch of that color. That's not really that saturated else, just lift off touch of it, something like that. Maybe. Yeah. Perfect. These two as well, just to touch a warm front top there, but the rest of it, I'll just leave. Okay. Good. I have to get in that water as well in a moment, but let's just put in a touch of this. Water here at the base so that we can come back to it in just a moment. I find that adding a bit of water at the base helps to just keep it wet for longer. While I just work on this left-hand side, touch of yellow up to the top here, very light yellow. I'm going to leave the whites on the on the right-hand side of the building though. This is the roof and there's more stuff going on in here as well. Just chuck that in, let it melt into the lighter yellow. Just going to keep going a bit more of this yellow, a little bit of this burnt sienna on the rooftops. Little bit of that white, just leaving touch of that white exposed. They're coming down on the page. Now. I'll pick up more of this kind of white, off-white color to drop in here. I don't want there to be too much vibrance. See, in that section, lips and it's kinda moved up. Here. We have orange, tiny bit of this orange for this building here they're a bit more vibrant. Orange. Drop that in. Okay. Remember to keep your washes real light. Mostly just water color for those buildings in the back. But apart from that, there's not a whole lot. You need to put in there little bit of this burnt sienna at the top of that roof here. That maybe a touch up here as well. Yeah. Okay. Good. So again, I will just perhaps spray down the bottom parts. Just with a touch of touch of water at the bottom. We'll come back to it in a moment. But I want to get the sky in. Firstly, I will use a larger brush. This is a larger mop brush, but I have this big brush here. You can use whatever large brushy gut going to mix up a lot of cerulean blue in here. Okay, let's start off right at the top. That's a good consistency. A lot of this is just water. But I find that with truly in blue it doesn't, you're not able to get a really dark wash of it anyhow, this is the darkest you, you're probably going to be able to get it. If possible. Just mix them up yourself by using a bit of straight from the tube. So I'm just going mixing this carrying this wash straight down. It's going over the top of the roof and look, some of it might mix in like that, don't worry. I tend to leave a little edge, see how I've just left the touch of the white and the paper that will cut around. So the water just doesn't mix into much. There. Look at that. Okay. I mean down more blue. Nice little cerulean blue. Once I get close, get close to these buildings. I really want to pay attention that I'm not going into them much. I'm cutting around them as you can see. I'm going to switch to another brush. Just a moment. See how much I can do this like that. So here I'll switch to another little mop brush. This. And let's shift some of this paint around. Let's go with these little weird bubbles. Just move them around a little. While the paper is still wet. You got a lot of wiggle room here. Okay. Where is the mop brush? This will work best. Smaller mop brush. And I'm just going to cut around. Touch like that. Okay. As long as the sky wash is just a touch darker, you'll be okay. Look at that. Cutting around there. There. Okay. Padding around the domes. You can also make this area a little darker near the domes. Higher concentration of cerulean to really bring out the contrasts that these leave out some of these chimneys and things. I'm just going to leave them white. And look at that just carrying this down page. Some pods it will mix, but really you don't have to worry. Okay, That's looking pretty good to me. I'm going to redo, just go over with this larger brush that helps to flatten out some of these inconsistencies like little bubbles and things like that. Okay? Um, another thing you can do is add in some darker mix is just up the top to help create a better sense of contrast. Usually at the top of the scene, I will darken a bit more like that, just dark and the top of it and feather feather reading as we move down as well. That's up to you if you want to add in also a cloud or something in here, I'll show you how to do that just while we're in it. Pick up a bit of purple color. So just a darker purple color we can find. And what I wanna do is pick up some of that purple, dry off the brush a touch. Then you can do stuff like this. You can just add in a little cloud or something like that. It's, it's, it's quite a dark cloud, but it will soften off a touch there. Here's another one like that. Try to keep the shapes randomized. Here's another one. As we move down the page, the clouds become a touch lighter and also smaller. Not like the ones up the top. If they if some of them look a bit too much and it'd be afraid to go in and just shifted around a bit. That one there. That's probably you'd be big but doesn't matter. Another one up here. There we go. There. How about we add a bit here? Little one there, little one here. They're just melting nicely to the page. The point where it starts looking good, just leave it. I love adding clouds in wet into wet. So I'll just add some of these in. I'm good. Some more here nor there. Okay. Good. So now let's move on to the water further down. And when I do, I just want to lift off some of this paint to wet. Some of this stuff is going to bleed too much into the water. I don't want that. So I'm just going to lift off some of this paint of dried off my brush and just using it to mop up the water. Okay. I'm gonna be using some cerulean, not so really in blue summer, ultramarine blue. In this section. Nice ultramarine blue. And also cerulean mixed together. So cerulean, ultramarine. Now this water is pretty dark. It's almost the darker spirit of the painting part from the shadows on the back. This water is almost as dark. A bit of turquoise, you can mix up some turquoise. I've got some pre-mixed up at turquoise is just a bit of it's just a little bit of yellow ocher and a bit of green mixed into it. Get a nice turquoise color. Okay, I want to mix up a fair bit of this stuff. Actually. I'm always, always run to the issue of not mixing enough paint and we can just play it by ear. This should be, hopefully, it should be hopefully enough. Good. Start off at the back. Here. Let's test that out. That dark enough. I think that's I think that's about dark enough. Let's continue on. And we can see here some of it's not completely dried yet. I will dry the paper just to touch with some hairdryer. This is a flat brush. Just use that to help get a sharp edge hopefully in there. Okay. Cut around this structure like that. Okay. Yeah. Let's just keep on moving this down. And you can see the boats and just cut around them like that. You leaving the white on the page. Kinda like what we've done with the building's. Be careful with this and just make sure you leave out what you need to leave out. Because of course we can go in later with a bit of gouache and bring out some of these highlights. But I just find it looks better if you get it. Get it in the first place. And don't be afraid also to leave little bits of white speckles and things in the water. Sometimes you miss out an area or something like that. Don't worry, just continue on, just leave it. And you see, look at these buildings. Some of it just the blue just melts into the buildings attached because the buildings aren't completely dried. And that's okay, just let it do its thing. As long as it doesn't mix all the way up, That's why I use that hairdryer for a bit. This is that gondola. Couple of those gondolas. We got in there before we go, just move that down a touch like that. They're just putting in. And there's actually another boat here which I'll add in the silhouette off like that, cutting around again. These little bits of water actually help to up to water. But these little highlights of the on the paper really helped to give this little sparkle. Doing this all just cutting around everything that we see like that. At some point I'm going to switch over to a larger brush because the detailing isn't quiet required anymore here. So we can pick up another bigger brush like this. And because that just makes it easier to do this at the bottom, those buildings and we like that. Like that. Cut around this something he used. Well, I'll just leave a bit of white there. Bit of white here. For instance. K Coming down, some more ultramarine, some more cerulean. It's predominantly cerulean in here. The ultramarine just helps to darken it down a bit. Okay. This is another boat, a gondola, I think that I'd put in there will have to reshape that later with some gouache. But look at that simple. Hear some more. Base. Yeah. I'm actually mixing in a little bit more purple at the, at the, as we move down to the front to help darken it a little more. This creates, again, this sense of perspective and depth in a painting. You get more darkness here at the front. Skipping over bits of the paper as well. I try to leave some bits of white in there if possible. I've got some little bits here and there. That's looking decent. Okay, so another thing that I will do is pick up some darker paint. I've got a bit of dark purple here. And what I can do is pick up that brush and some of that dark paint and just flicking a few little waves and things in the water. Just as just like this. So you can get in just these like indications of waves really. Um, they come in all these different angles really. So I will try to keep them a bit more erratic here and there. In the background the ways becomes smaller, so don't add them in really much in the background. It's more just a bit here in the foreground while the paint is still drawing so that you can get in. I don't know. It just feels like there's some movement going on in here rather than it being completely still and be one color. A little bit of something in here does help. Okay, I can add little bits, tiny bits of paint, bringing things to life. As you can see. Look at that. Amazing. Okay, good. Even spray the paper, but if you want it to spread a touch more. Okay. Good. I'm now let's start working on the shadows of the buildings. I will dry them off a little bit. 5. Second Wash: I'm going to use this same flat brush. And the mixture I'm going to use is mostly bit of ultramarine. Bit of a bit of a lamp, black here as well. Touch a brown, but it's mostly kind of a cool gray color, which tends to work at best if you use either a neutral tint and a bit of blue, or you just a bit of lamp black or Lunar Black. Some kind of granulating Black, essentially with some blue in there. Let's have a look how we want to also use a very light wash. In fact, these buildings are quite dark, so they actually darker than the water. So I want to make them march little bit, little bit darker than the water. Okay. I think that's going to that's going to do the trick like that. That's the shadow underneath here. Get that in. You only need to do this once and try not to fiddle around with it too much. And these are just little bits of the chimneys and things that I thought I could indicate here as well because it is a bit of that purple and the and that side of the building. Little bit of purple for the shadow. Nice and sharp. I would say the mixture is 40% paint, 60% water, but because I've got a lot of dark purple in there, it's quite it's quite dark, still. Little shadows for the areas like that. Here. We can go back into that later. I'm just going to do this building here and get that to come down and don't be afraid to also leave in some highlights like little bits of yellow peeking through. Let's get in this building. This flat brush makes it quite easy to get in sharper shapes are the buildings. It is shaped. Nicer for that same sort of shape as the building. Is getting this side of the building here. Well, just joins up with the water. Alright, can I need to darken this paint a little bit more? Little bit more. It's still going to dry, touch darker than the water. Here. We can just get indications of like a light bouncing off the side, creating a touch of contrast. The building here, like they're a bit darker. Just drop in another bit of paint. It works better if you just get it the right consistency the first time around that. This part of the building as well. Let's see, what is this building under construction, but I'll just darken this down like that. Bit more grayish color in there as well as to perfectly at the moment, some more black in that mixture. Doesn't matter that this building here, this building is actually lighter. So I'm going to add in some more water or this one, the shadow is not as dark as the ones on the left. I liked the sexual contrast. The shadows are not all the same tone. It's very tricky to figure this out as a beginner, but look carefully at how dark shape is. And that's how you able to figure it out. Even the top of this roof I've noticed is more brown and darker. So I can just try my trying to get in touch of that brown at the top for this roof here. Okay. I mean, it's not certainly is not the most dark, super dark. What is darker than how it looks at the moment. So I thought, why not just putting a bit of that indicate up the top like that. Most of it though is just leaving, leaving it in and I'm allowing it to create some contrast for later. Small bits on the roof top. What have we got ten here. Okay, Again, this part of the building. Has shadows, just purple shadows. I'm going to put in running down the side and leaving in some of that color from the previous wash. Like that. I find like making it darker down the base helps as well to ground the buildings. Here. This one here as well. This sort of like it could be winning here in the background. And as we're moving closer into the, into the foreground, adding more paint, just a touch more paint on some of these buildings like this one here you can really get in this shadow. This is a great one to do good fun. Just that side of the building like that. Even on the chimneys, you can pick out like a touch of slither of light. They're little slither of light for this chimney or running up the building. You've even got like windows and stuff that you can indicate on there like that. This joins on here. There. Everything just joins on this big shadow shape. Okay? Would own one kind of go. That is a softer shadow here. Actually, I'm just going to get it in quickly like that. Maybe spray it quickly. Every little spray. And that that color, that purple permeate through a bit to purplish at the top. I'm going to add in a bit more brown and I'm going to be to brownie color and just drop it in darker color like that. There. You that bring this down to the bottom here. Notice how I've left some of these warmer colors showing through as well. That's really important. Keeps it looking interesting. Now, let's have a look at the other bits and pieces of the building and see if we can perhaps adding extra details for the rooftops and things. And one thing I've noticed is just some of the rooftops and not really as lot as I've made them. So I can actually go ahead and darken a bit, just a little bit of brown a lot washer brands mostly just water in there. The roofs like here. You can get in a little bit of brown paint, for instance, like that. In areas. I don't want to do it all across the board, but like parts of the rooftops like that in here, even these bits of brown and things are, I don't know what that is really button, it's just a touch darker color in there. Hopefully it's mixing, get it to just mix and blend a bit with the purple in there too. While the paint is still wet, you've got a lot of time to fiddle around with this top stuff. Okay. But I don't want to I don't want to overwork it or start to start to overthink things too much. Just in places, bits and pieces like here for instance, this should be darker. Rooftop in the background, it's brown, it's a bit darker back there. Okay. This one here a little bit darker as well. And soft and it just quick spray like that. I find sometimes spraying on top of the page and just getting a few droplets of water create tiny micro blooms. And I don't know, I think it makes the wash look more interesting. So I purposely just flicking some water every time I read a bit like this and let it do its thing. Okay. It looks mad, but it actually works. Let's put in a little bit of this part of the chimney or whatever it is, like. The you know, even back here, these two this part here is actually darker like that. Okay. Good. Let's work a bit on this. These ones to the left, I'll leave this to dry just quickly. I'll start putting in some little color here for underneath the rooftop. There's some shadow. Okay, that's really all I think I need to do for that one. There's not much at all. The rooftop is actually lighter, not managed to get the bottom of it in completely lighter, but I will just leave that. I don't really want to color the top into much. Best we can do is something like just a little light wash of color for the roof like this. Something like that. Nothing more. Little bits of shadow, e.g. here, you're gonna get a dark section of the roof here. And the top of the roof still going to be slightly sunlight. But I want to just emphasize that right-hand side of the building like that. I'll figure that out there. Hear bits and pieces to be the darkness here on this roof top here as well, like that. Then this middle section, that touch of detail for the sides of the buildings like this. You see underneath the buildings these little shadows running under the, the top part of the roof. That really helps. You can even put in like little windows here. Just using the brush tiny little indications of windows, not much effort really. This is little flags here. I'll just maybe indicate them. I don't want to even get in much of the detail of what that flag is, but something like that. Some indications maybe the floors of this building and I don't know if you can get in a couple of windows and a couple of windows on the side of it like that. That's sufficient. I'm good. I'll just start putting in a bottom of these buildings and merging it with the water or touch. Really with the buildings. As you can see, these dark areas in them, which is what I'm trying to create. Just some little windows and bits with the brush like that. The tops of the roof like that, or the sides of the buildings, whatever you want to call them. Just quick. Bits of information. You've got these kind of shade cloth almost like that as well. You can see them on the side of the building. You can just indicate them like that. Shades or whatever. My main aim is just to preserve pretty much all the light there. So just to touch of detail will be fine. In fact, I would have liked for this to be lighter, but this is still good. Now the right hand side of everything, it should really be just about dried. I'm going to put in a little touch of color underneath these boats. And you can see the reason why I do this is because it, it brings out the detail like the anchors it more to the ground and brings out the detail of it when you do this. Okay? So it looks more like a bird or a shape there. The too far in the distance really, and especially at this vantage point to see the ripples and the reflections of them in the water. So there's no point doing too much there. That could be a boat that I forgot to put in, maybe one here as well. Just guessing. Gonna give this a quick dry. 6. Detailing: Alrighty, So time to add in some finishing touches, all the little windows and bits and pieces. And for this, are we using a small flat brush, maybe a little round brush as well to aid me in getting in these little details, I'm gonna be using mainly black neutral tint. You can mix up your own docs as well. I'm just going to use a really dark color and dry off that brush. First thing we can do is work on some of these see bits and pieces here. Tiny little areas where you can just dry brushing like a window indication of a window like that. You can see there these kind of like, I don't know, like floors but the kind of see these tiny little bits like this and if you do it quickly, it actually just looks better. But I know there's like three looks like this, three or so floors running through their touch that in like that. This is really dark paint. It's mostly just paint, just a little bit of water, 90% paint really this darker color. To put in the indications of the really the final highlights of the painting. It's important to have the brush quiet. Quiet. It's important to have the brush quite dry as well. For this little bit of this figure on top of there, the dome. You can see here these sections that are quite dark, that just dropping in that touch a detail. I'm just feathering it in. Not much line work there at all. Okay. Little bit on the left side of the of the dome. Like that. Little bit in the center like that. Okay. Let's have a look. Sometimes underneath the buildings you might get like the underneath the rooftops. I mean, you might get a little bit of darkness there. But let's focus more on these windows again, just these little windows that we can feathering then get in touch with vindication. Them. Some of them are bigger. Mind you so creek indications, I don't want to spend too much time on this. Here on the water as well. You noticed it's quite dark. The base of the buildings becomes very dark and you want to add really a dark colors back here to help anchor the building to the ground to touch, okay. And work like that. Even this building you can see there's a few kind of windows that pop out their new here indications like that. Remember the dark area underneath the buildings. Sometimes you also got like a little separation. That's a separation. There were buildings that you get a bit of darkness running through in areas. Separation like that. I'm coming through some more of this building is a touch darker as well. But again, this dark area underneath the buildings. Just doing my best to indicate some of this in here. That's the darkest part of the painting just underneath the buildings itself. I would have liked to get the buildings in a little bit darker, but because we weren't able to do that, I think this is one of the most important things to get right. Overdo it Darren. Actually little shadow running across that cost on to this part of the white area of the building. Just I thought I'd add that in quickly. That still leaves a sharp edge here for that building. To the right. Can also start playing around with the chimneys and things like we, we did we did them. That before, but here, we can just drop in some more contrast. The chimney is just little darkness in areas to indicate the parts of the chimneys that stick out, but I don't want to overdo it, but at the same time, I think this helps to give it a level of detail and complexity through indication of what's actually there. You'd be surprised how little, a few little vertical marks like that will suddenly add some detail and create situation. It looks like there's more in there than meets the eye. I wanted to outline just some of the buildings have touched more like a little bit of darkness underneath the rooftops of areas like that. Just tiny little bit of that's too much. But I like this soft detail like that underneath the rooftops and things. Here, a little bit there as well. Outlining some bits in pieces. We've also got these little windows wherever on that on the towers. And I can just go ahead and indicate that it's putting a bit more bluish color for this side of the side of the tower like that. There we are. This is just a little shadow. Shadow like that. Um, and funny enough, we do have a little shadow on this dome, on the right-hand side of the dome. So I can put that in like that as well. It's actually it's actually caused by that one, but I don't want to I don't want to connect it up too much. Something like that should be okay. Shatter. It is a sharp shadow, so I'll leave that I was going to soften it a bit. We might we might want to, but just to put a shadow like that. There we are. I might add in. I watch this often some of this stuff as well if I can just, well, this is looking a bit too harsh bit of water in here and just soften this little line. Maybe this one as well. This little modifications like this that you will do from time to time. If you've got a paper towel like that, you can also just lift off some paint. Let's just try that one more time. That wouldn't be too overboard with the darkness in there. Soften that lift-off. That that's nicer. Shift some of that color upwards. Picking out a few more areas of some shadows as well. So here are not shadows but little windows. I can just drop in just this subtle, subtle hint of these windows with the flat brush and dry it off a little bit as well as you can see just a little little windows there like that. I'm good. The windows, if you do it right, helped to form the boundary between the buildings as well. That helps. I do see a touch of shadow on this building. And I could go ahead and put in a bit of it like that. So often that down and touch like that. Here we are. That's good. So often that I don't want to get rid of that lovely light, that little section of that that's peeking through. Maybe soften this part as well. So it's like a softer purplish shadow running through this mix. This is nothing I might want to just change your own as well. Like for instance, this building in the background. It is lighter, but I want to darken it down just to touch with some purple so that the building here to the left appears a little bit lighter, forms a better contrast. That more purple in there. Like that. Good. Some more little bits of neutral tint. For the tops of these towers. Like that. We need just a little indication, not not, not much at all really. It's really just a lot of this touch and go. I find that the longer you spend in there trying to identify everything, they just, you lose the plot. Okay? I'll put a little window on this dome and then just underneath that area. Okay. Softer. I'll put another one on that side. Just a little occasion of one like that. Really depends on the angle that you're looking at these you're looking at the domes and some of these chimneys and things as well. Not forgetting them. Redo some bits and pieces sticking out here and there. Again, this helps to create the illusion of details and it's in here. Maybe I'll stop putting a few here actually on this building. Like touch on top of this one. That's about it. I feel like it will make the make it pop out that the lights on that side of the building. There are in fact actually little bits on the roof here anyway. The darkness under there, there should be. Alright, I don't want to overdo it. Here. She will clock here. I can barely see it, but there's a little clock there. Okay. Good morning. Darkness there. Oh, there's actually some maybe some railing at the top here. It's so subtle, but I thought I could just put in a bit of that like that, a bit of separation also top of the dome. And you paint these with this touch and go technique like I'm doing now, you just, Let's spend too much time in there. Here we go. I'm just working on these buildings to the right now. We're almost there in terms of the buildings, chimneys and things. We can spend all day just doing this. Which is can be a good and a bad thing at the same time. Here are some more windows and things. I thought I'd add some more in here on this one here, and you're using a very dark paint, as I said before, with not much water in there. Because all these previous area of the peers areas have dried off. You're not faced with any of this stuff, just running and creating a mess. So you really just using the brush to detail and create structure. The key or you can even draw in like the sum of the floors as well. Not drawing paint in some of the floors, but this is a little bit of shadow underneath the rooftops. Yeah, Qia little bit something here as well. There's a window here which I can just indicate. I could indicate another window just underneath like that. Just a quick thing. There. Some more larger areas at the bottom. Well, these archways and things as so much in here, all I'm doing is just indicating I will go in with a touch of gouache later on to indicate more details. But for this part, all you gotta do is just make sure you've got a few vertical lines running through to indicate windows. Some more. Again, because it's touch and go technique. And In this chimney or something near another one there, there are the rare you put in actually before, but this darkening it a little more. Even some more bits and pieces on top of the roof here. There's I mean, there's all kinds of things going on, but it's up to you how much you want to detail and add in. I'm just gonna do some more for this one. Actually, this is a window here as well. Make it more squarish shaped. This is a window, isn't it there? At the end of the day? I don't want to spend too much time adding in all these tiny little bits and pieces, but the same like this. I find that it can get really drawn in and have a bit of fun practicing all these little details. Some of the chimneys may cost a little shadow as well on top of the roofs. Roofs are areas that you can see here. Even a light wash of purple underneath here indicate like a shadowing. Just a light little shadow. Windows as well, getting a little shadow area around the windows like that. More shadow on the left of the windows and the arches and things. Okay. All right. Let's work on these buildings to the left. I'm going to do the same technique, just some more darker colors. There's not a whole lot to do here because we are predominantly working with working with a lot. In this section. I can spot a few bits that we can just add in. Just underneath there. I want to get it to match up with just a few more darks in there to match up with the right hand side. Touch and go. Just touch and go. And what are we, what else do we have in darkness? And here, here. What I might do is actually put in a little shadow, a little lighter shadow running underneath something like between these buildings like here. I just want to experiment and see how that looks. And it's just a softness because there's just too much the same tone in here. This might help. A little bit. Good. I think that looks better actually. Base of the water here where it hits the ground, just a little bit more darkness and bits that I do notice behind the buildings and over there, there is a little bit of this greenish color for the the trees and things. I will actually, I think I'm just going to use a little bit of blue mixed into the green. If I can do this, I can get the blue-green color and really keep this quiet light as well. I don't want too much going on back there. Just a light wash to push it back. This kind of tree line or whatever. We get that c tau, it's just soft, softened. This little tree line. Just soften that off, feather that in and get it to connect on as well to the building here like that. And suddenly you've got a negatively painted shape. Without too much, too much of a contrast. But it does look like it's in the background and it's a sharper shape as well. So what we want lost those buildings, but we'll try to bring them back later. Okay. Some little effects here for chimneys and things in. I know they're not really there for this building, but I want to. Just put in a few here and there. And there's actually some kinda like balcony here. I forgot to get that in, but doesn't matter. Like this. The sides of the buildings. I'll just getting some little indications of these. You can see these little tiny little windows. I'm hoping if I can get a few more of these in, it will actually make the building appear darker or lighter, sorry. Redo some of this stuff here. More darkness on some of the bottom parts of these boats that you even see. Some over here like these, like gone to this maybe just underneath this section. Just dark. It's in pieces like that. Don't want that one there. Dry brushing, just a lot of these dry brushing stuff as you can see. Other stuff going on in here. There's even like some wooden pylons which have that kind of darker color unknown as well. Just picking up more brown. Drop this in. Really, I think if I could just get quite a dark color, it might be better. And just drop it in. Just neutral tint. Some darker looking pylons. In this mix. As we move into the foreground, the they become taller as well. So I'm just trying to increase the size of them here in the foreground. Foreground. That and there's actually a few in here too. I thought I'll, I will get some here and some in here. Just a few verticals will actually use the gouache later on to getting extra details and some highlights on the pylons. A few more just in the myths. Maybe a smaller brush would make it easier. Little round brush like this. Mostly just paint. Really not much water in here at all. Just a little bit of water only to activate the paint. Otherwise it'll be dry. And look how it's just all kinda like these little dry brush strokes here and there. Some more with this side. Because I'm gonna get in actually some lighter ones anyway. Maybe large one here coming through the scene just right in the foreground like that. This helps to create, again, that sense of depth and a feeling of maybe moving into the scene. 7. Final Touches: This is just some pure white wash. And I'm going to use to bring out some details on what we see in this scene. Just a little water to activate it. Alright. Let's have a look around. So one thing I do notice is that there's actually so much so many of these little frames going on. You can see just the frames of these windows and things in here as well, which you can indicate, but I can, I don't want to do all of them. Just pick out a few. You might want to bring out of the darkness. But I don't want to overdo it. The temptation here is really to get everything in all these little windows in, but we can also a bit of a mess if we do that, suggest. Now you can see I've drawn off the brush, just going in, in little areas in the corners and stuff, maybe picking out a few areas I want to get in here. This is like a little bit of white from the window frames. I'll do notice actually on the left-hand side is much more of these, much, much more apparent. I can even just go in here and getting some areas of the window is make it look a bit better. Use the gouache very sparingly. I think you can. It's easy to go overboard. The shore. Oops. Kinda like that. Didn't want that dry off the brush enough so that it doesn't spread everywhere. Some more details on the dome. And again, touching go touch and go's the best policy here because I lost a bit of light on the dome. So this is why I'm trying to just bring it back, touch a bit back like that with some of this white touch of it, only hope to clean up some of these areas. You get little bits of light that hit the corners of the buildings and the windows. So these little sparkly bits, I mean, they, they really help. So it just touches of that quotient there. Not too much, just an a here and there. Yeah, they can outline the frames of the windows as well. Not only that, but here you can see in the water there's actually some lighter ones. These lighter pylons that stick out of the water. And not only that, these ones here were all the way in the background, they're not completely white, but I'm going to just put them in a touch of yellow. This is a bit of yellow ochre war to just warm it up. A touch of yellow ocher and white wash so that it's still very light but has less contrast. And using pure white. Here, I am just putting in a few of those. I got myself one of those smaller rigger brushes like these pick-up that rigger brush, it's got one here. This will make it easier. It gets some tiny little bits like that. Katie reinforce these little m, which you may call it wooden poles sticking out of the water that just gone a little bit too far out the back actually. But there are a few there doesn't matter. You just sticking out of the water. Kind of just not much detail, but tiny ones like that. They're slowly just doubled down a bit as well as we as it dries. Just putting in a few little bits and pieces. We've got all the dark areas in already. So this is really my chance at getting a little bit of a highlight, I guess on some of the pylons that I want to draw that brush off that's to shop. Some of these, these marks pick-up. This is the flat brush. Easier for these bigger ones, especially that doing it for some of these ones as well. Okay. Yeah. Maybe more white as well for some of them like this. To just be more white here and here. Shape these boats, touch better. Well, this, I think this was meant to be a gondola or something here in the front, but I'll just change it up to make it look like in a larger boat, maybe like this. This is a boat as well. I have to get in some more detail on in just a moment and just bring this out. Touch as well. This is a gondola. You get an a bit of light on that gondola. Here. This is another boat. These two are boats here as well. So pretty much I can do there for them anyway. This one here, I can just bring out the top of it better. You can even invent some, I mean, you can do something like this. Create some little ones off in the distance and aren't really there, but just be careful how much you do this. Well, I'm gonna get a few little sparkles or something here in the in the water, a little bit of white like this. Bring back some of it. My client. Because there's just not much contrast here in the water. I'm going to be careful with this as well. I don't want to I want it to look too. There's too much in there. What I'll do is just work a bit on getting in some color for the boats. Some of this shadow area on the boat, like for here, I think this side of the boat is gonna be in darkness. I'll just add a bit of purple color in there like this. Okay. Shadow to the left-hand side of the boat. Not only that, but we do have other, these gondola like shapes. I'll pick up some real vibrant blue. This is ultramarine. And I can go ahead and getting that just a bit more. Just described this one a bit more. Here and there. Like that. I mean, this could mean that was a gondola, but I don't need to I can't do anything with it anymore. But here, just underneath. That is another one. This vibrant blue that we can get in. Another one there. Maybe. This is just indications of what's happening. If darkness on the left side of that boat. Maybe bit here as well. Softer than that. Oh, yeah. This is some kind of hot whatever. They're just getting a bit of shadow to the left of it. And some brownie color for the roof. That couple maybe like a window here, something couple of little windows like that. I'm good. This is all the tiny finishing touches that bring together the painting. And you want to spend time, I think on this, on this part, depending on how detailed you want your painting to be. The more detailed you want it to be, the more you should spend extra time here. To put in these little shapes and things. I mean, these boats as well. There's actually a like a bit of a line there and this is a gondola are actually here in the foreground. I didn't recognize that one. But I'll get into some more of these blue this more vibrant colored blue like that indicates that it could be maybe to gun dealers or something. I don't want to stuff it all up. Yeah. We need a bit more going on in there. Underneath this boat. Sometimes you gotta pay extra detail like that. These blue parts like that. Sometimes think what we can do is maybe add in some people just little indications only I don't want to get the bodies and then a head or something for people in very difficult to see what's going on. But you will notice there's little bits of dark, darkness, the boats and things. And this is going to help imply that there's some people in their little darker waves running across the water. Little bits of sporadic knows. Some more areas here where you buildings. Okay. Little bit more. Tiny bit of darkness on the top of this building to get in the indication of the shadow to the left of it, like that. Okay. Some parts of these buildings in the background just darken off attach and you've got this little, tiny little line work areas as well that you can do on the domain. I want to just smudge some of this off so that it's not too apparent. It's more that gouache in there. Vertical is running down. What else do we have? Lightening bit of whitewash. White in there as well. Just a little bit of extra detail for the dome. Spots, bits and pieces. Why not play around with that a touch. Extra white. Again. Some more details on the boats like this. Just bring out the final white finishing touches on the boats. Kind of like the light hitting, hitting the front of the boats. Here. Maybe this one's got a bit of a top part like that. That's better. A fishing boat or something. Alright. I'm gonna put in some finishing touches, just some little birds up in the sky. I'll pick up a light bit of purple. I've just got some really kind of a grayish purple. And let's put a few up here, just these little v shapes in the sky. They help to indicate these little birds and they tend to hang around. I find near the towers and the buildings and a bit hit and miss with this. But I think this should work out nicely. Just a few here and come around in clumps as well. Some spots. I'm hoping this will make it look a bit more joined onto the sky. Just get an a few like there might be some here. Yeah. The odd ones off in the distance like that. Yeah. Yeah. Pick off a few. Some of the top as well, near the clouds. And these little v shapes appearing in the sky. I think they sort of draw attention to the dome as well, which I like. And we're finished.